Count Melenth Part 3

I'm continuing to refine the face on Melenth.  I did some more work on the skin under regular lighting, painting the back left of the head and his neck.  I also tweaked the shadow on the right of his forehead.  There was a section that was a sharp line which just didn't look right, so I smeared it out.  Then I painted the teeth (nice and yellowish).  And finally I did some work on the OSL.  I adjusted some of the placement and upped the brightness of the highlights (leaving the rest pretty dark so you get a more dramatic transition).  There are a few very minor things I want to tweak, but mostly I'm very happy with the OSL.  Oh, and the OSL on the neck is still unfinished, I need to bring up the brightness there to match the work on the face.

Here's a look at an earlier version and then the most recent one.  You can easily see the change in brightness and some of the other adjustments I made.

Count Melenth Part 2

I've taken my sketch on Count Melenth and started to smooth it out.  The OSL section is still in the early stages, but I have been working on the skin under normal lighting (along with some of the shadows on the dark side).  Of course even that is still a work in progress.  I'm still making tweaks to the shadows and highlights as there are a few parts I feel aren't quite right.  When that's done (along with the OSL sections), I'll go back in to add further detail with glazes (and maybe a few other things I want to try out).

Count Melenth Part 1

I got this fantasy bust from a new company, Polaris Minor.  They've got several sculpts for sale and they all look quite nice, but this one in particular caught my eye.  It's an evil looking fantasy character, so there are tons of possibilities for the painting.  I decided to try something new with this figure and make this a bit of a learning project.  In addition to the fantasy stuff I have planned (unnatural skin, fun with colors, etc), I'm going to try to play around with lighting effects (OSL).  The main light source will be above the figure and slightly to his left.  The secondary light source will be below and to his right.  To help me in the planning, I took pictures of the figure under each of these lighting conditions.

This will provide a (hopefully) useful reference as I work on the painting.  Speaking of painting, I began that by just sketching on the colors.  Using the pictures as a guide, I placed the main shadows and highlights without worrying about blending.  This will help me get see how it should look in the end and whether or not the effects are working as I planned.  Sure, I've done OSL before on the hobbit piece... but I really don't feel like come close to mastering the technique.  I still find it very challenging, so getting a bit more practice is a good thing.  Everything is still rough and, as I begin to blend, I'm sure I'll continue to tweak the OSL.

In general I like where this is headed, though I feel like it's not entirely right.  Hopefully I'll figure out what's bugging me as I go!